Tapestry
an ornamental textile used for the covering of walls and furniture, and for curtains and hangings. In its method of manufacture it is intimately related to Oriental carpets, which are made in precisely the same way as certain kinds of tapestry, the only dis- TAPESTRY tinction being that carpets are meant for floor-covering alone. Fine storied tapestries are, however, much more elaborate and costly than any carpets, and they have altogether different artistic pretensions. Tapestries are divided into two classes, according as they are made in high warp or low warp looms. The former in manufacture have their warp threads stretched in a vertical manner with a roller at the top around which the warps are wound, and another at the bottom for receiving the finished tapestry. On the low warp looms the warp is extended horizontally, there being an arrangement in both for shedding or separating the warp into two leaves, front and back, as in ordinary weaving.
It is in high warp looms that the most elaborate storied or pictorial tapestries are made, low warp looms being more largely devoted to the production of still life and non-pictorial decorative compositions. Notwithstanding these differences, it is difficult to distinguish between tapestries which have been made on high and low warp looms respectively, though the latter are more rapidly and consequently less expensively woven. sa The art of tapestry-working is of high antiquity, and it may be that the curtains of the tabernacle "of blue and purple and scarlet, with cherubim of cunning work" (Exod. xxvi: 1), were a kind of tapestry, though more probably they were of needle work. The so-called Bayeaux Tapestry is really embroidered work of the period of William the Conqueror. The art of tapestry working, and indeed all fine weaving, came to Europe from the East, and so well was this recognized that during the Middle Ages the fabric was generally known as Sarrazinois. So far as is known the art of high warp tapestry weaving was first practiced in Flanders toward the end of the 12th century, and it flourished in the rich and prosperous towns of Arras, Valenciennes, Lille, Brussels, etc., and from the predominant importance of the first of these towns storied tapestries came to be generally known as "Arras." The disasters which overwhelmed the land during the contest with the Spanish power led many of the most skillful of the tapestry weavers to seek an asylum in foreign lands, and thus the art spread to various European centers. Repeated attempts had been made in France from the middle of the 16th century onward to establish the industry, but it was not till two Flemish workers, Comans and De la Planche, were engaged for an establishment formerly occupied by a family of wool dyers called Gobelin, that the industry was successfully ally founded and the famous Gobelins factory begun. TAPESTRY The manufactures of the Savonnerie, an establishment founded by Henri IV. for velvet-pile carpets and hangings, was in 1826 combined with the Gobelins, and the two industries are now carried on together by the state. There is also a state factory for low warp tapestries at Beauvais; and at Aubusson and Felletin commercial tapestries are very largely made for furniture covering, etc., in establishments which in earlier times were celebrated for their tapestries de luxe. Tapestries were also made at an early period in England. In 1619 an establishment was founded at Mortlake by Sir Francis Crane, and under his guidance works of the very highest merit were produced.
Tapestries especially the high warp storied varieties are the textiles of kings. In earlier times the monarchs of Europe resorted to the Netherlands for pieces for the decoration of their palaces; and when the manufacture came to be more disseminated it was almost entirely under state supervision and control that the work was carried on.
It was for tapestry that Raphael produced the immortal series of cartoons illustrating the acts of Christ and the Apostles which were executed in Brussels for the Sistine Chapel. Seven of these cartoons, purchased by Charles I. under the advice of Rubens, are now in South Kensington Museum.
TAPEWORM, an intestinal worm, Tænia solium, in form somewhat resembling tape. Its length is from 5 to 15 yards, and its breadth from two lines at the narrowest part to four or five at the other or broader extremity. At the narrow end is the head, which is terminated A B TAPEWORM. A AND B-HEAD ENLARGED anteriorly by a central rostellum, surrounded by a crown of small recurved hooks, and behind them four suctorial depressions; then follow an immense number of segments, each full of micro- TAPEWORM scopic ova. The segments are capable of being detached when mature, and reproducing the parasite. There is no mouth; but nutrition appears to take place through the tissues of the animal, as algæ derive nourishment from the sea water in which they float. The digestive system consists of two tubes or lateral canals, extending from the anterior to the posterior end of the body, and a transverse canal at the summit of each joint.
The tapeworm lives in the small intestines of man, affixing itself by its double circle of hooks. When the reproductive joints or proglottides become mature, they break off and are voided with the stools. They may get into water, or may be blown about with the wind, till some of them are at length swallowed by the pig, and produce a parasite called Cysticercus cellulosæ, which causes measles in the pig. When the measly pork is eaten by man, a tapeworm, the ordinary T. solium, appears in his intestines. This species mainly affects the poor, who are the chief pork-eaters. Called more fully the pork tapeworm. The beef tapeworm, T. mediocanellata, has no coronet of hooks on the head. The segments are somewhat larger than in the ordinary tapeworm. It is 15 to 23 feet long. The cysticercus of this species forms measles in the ox, and is swallowed by man in eating beef. It chiefly affects the rich.
The broad tapeworm, Bothriocephalus latus, is 25 feet long by nearly an inch broad, and chiefly affects the inhabitants of Switzerland, Russia and Poland.
The adult sexual Txniadx live for the most part in birds and mammals, the larval "bladder worms" or Cysticerci occur in both higher and lower animals.
Two Tæniadæ are in the adult sexual state parasitic in man: Tænia solium, with the bladder worm stage in the pig; T. saginate or mediocanellata, with bladder worm in the ox; and some others, T. cucumerina, T. nana, T. flavomaculata, and T. madagascariensis, occasionally occur. They infest the small intestine, and there also Bothriocephalus latus (larval in pike and burbot) may be found. Moreover tænioid bladder worms also occur in man, the most important being that of T. echinococcus, which lives as an adult tapeworm in the dog.
The presence of tapeworm in the small intestine need not be dangerous, but it is usually troublesome, giving rise to disturbances of digestion, colic-like pains, diarrhea, or, on the contrary, constipation, besides less local effects, such as anæmic and neurotic states. Of anthelmintics-which are intended to expel the parasite from the intestine-there is no lack in the pharmacopœia.
TAPIOCA